BOOK NOTES: More book news, March 30, 2013

Compiled by Mary Louise Ruehr, Books Editor

Saturday

Mar 30, 2013 at 4:00 AM

BOOK CLUBS

Monday Morning Book Group: 11 a.m. April 1, Kent Free Library, 312 W. Main St. -- "The Necklace" by Cheryl Jarvis. B.Y.O.C. (Bring Your Own Cup) for free coffee and discussion on the first Monday of each month. No registration required. Copies available at the Check Out Desk. Information: 330-673-4414 or kflinfo@kentfreelibrary.org.

Page to Screen Book Club: 7 p.m. April 3, Kent Free Library -- "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee and the 1962 movie of the same name, starring Gregory Peck. Read the book and watch the movie, then discuss their differences and share opinions on the first Wednesday of each month. No registration required. Copies available at the Check Out Desk. Information: 330-673-4414 or kflinfo@kentfreelibrary.org.

KFL Cookbook Club: 6 p.m. April 15 at 6 p.m., Kent Free Library -- Vegetarian. Check out a vegetarian cookbook, pick a recipe, make a batch to share with the group, and discuss experience in the kitchen. Meets on the third Monday of each month. No registration required, but call the Information Desk at 330-673-4414 to register or for help locating a cookbook.

Pierce Streetsboro Library's Book Discussion Club: 3 p.m. April 15, meeting room of the library, 8990 Kirby Lane -- "Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel" by Jeannette Walls, about the author's grandmother, a frontier teacher, rancher, poker player and bootlegger in the early 1900s. Refreshments courtesy of the Friends of Pierce Streetsboro Library. To register: 330-626-4458.

Your High School Reading List: 7 p.m. April 16, Kent Free Library, 312 W. Main St. -- Celebrating National Poetry Month. Each person will bring one or two favorite poems to share and discuss. Group meets the third Tuesday of each month. No registration required. Information: 330-673-4414 or kflinfo@kentfreelibrary.org.

Mystery Mondays: 7 p.m. April 29, Kent Free Library -- "First Grave on the Right" by Darynda Jones. Group meets the last Monday of each month. No registration required. Information: 330-673-4414 or kflinfo@kentfreelibrary.org.

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Author Regina Brett returns to Hudson

Local writer Regina Brett, author of "God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life's Little Detours" and "Be the Miracle: 50 Lessons for Making the Impossible Possible," will visit the Laurel Lake Retirement Community, 200 Laurel Lake Drive in Hudson, at 3 p.m. on Thursday.

The event is open to the public. Books will be available to purchase at the event. For more information, call The Learned Owl Book Shop at 330-653-2252.

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Civil War author to visit The Learned Owl Book Shop

Civil War author Steven D. Harris will be at The Learned Owl Book Shop, 204 N. Main St., Hudson, at 1 p.m. April 6 to answer questions about the people, places and events contained in his new book, "Faded Lines of Gray." It is the true story of one of the most daring exploits of the Civil War: free rebel prisoners held captive on Johnson's Island near Sandusky, Ohio, and simultaneously capture the only U.S. warship on the Great Lakes, the U.S.S. Michigan.

The story in the book focuses on the involvement of two principal characters: John Yates Beall and Charles H. Cole. Virginian Beall comes from a well-established family and is completely devoted to the rebel cause. Cole's background and motivations are less clear, and Harris postulates the theory that he may have in fact been a Union double agent. In addition to the description of the planning and execution of the Johnson's Island Raid, the book also is a character study of how these two different people responded to the events of the Civil War.

Steven D. Harris grew up in Northwest Ohio, not far from Johnson's Island, where much of this story is set. After a successful career as a Washington and New York-based international tax attorney, he retired to the Northern Neck of Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay. There he sails the creeks and rivers plied by John Yates Beall early in the Civil War as a Confederate privateer.

For more information, call the Learned Owl Book Shop at 330-653-2252.

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Best-Sellers

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST-SELLERS

The Associated Press

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "Six Years" by Harlan Coben (Dutton)

2. "The Storyteller" by Jodi Picoult (Atrai/Emily Bestler Books)

3. "Alex Cross, Run" by James Patterson (Little, Brown)

4. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn (Crown)

5. "The Striker" by Cussler/Scott (Putnam)

6. "A Week in Winter" by Maeve Binchy (Knopf)

7. "Calculated in Death" by J.D. Robb (Putnam Adult)

8. "A Story of God and All of Us" by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett (FaithWords)

9. "The Chance" by Karen Kingsbury (Howard Books)

10. "Damascus Countdown" by Joel C. Rosenberg (Tyndale)

11. "Halo: Silentium" by Greg Bear (Tor Books)

12. "Breaking Point" by C.J. Box (Putnam)

13. "Until the End of Time" by Danielle Steel (Delacorte)

14. "The Dinner" by Herman Koch (Hogarth)

15. "Frost Burned" by Patricia Briggs (Ace Books)

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg (Knopf)

2. "Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World" by Phil McGraw (Bird Street Books)

23. "Now You See Her" by James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge (Grand Central Publishing)

24. "The Fast Diet" by Michael Moseley, Mimi Spencer (Atria Books)

25. "Defending Jacob" by William Landay (Dell)

For the extended, interactive and searchable version of this list, visit http://books.usatoday.com/list/index

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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Publisher speeds up e-book access for libraries

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- The publisher of Khaled Hosseini, Harlan Coben and other popular authors has decided that it's comfortable with letting libraries offer e-book editions of brand new releases.

Starting Tuesday, libraries can offer e-books from Penguin Group (USA) at the same time that the hardcover comes out, a switch from the previous policy of delaying downloads for six months, the publisher told The Associated Press. While vastly more e-books are available to libraries compared with a few years ago, Penguin and other publishers have limited digital access for fear of losing sales. The American Library Association has been calling for less restrictive terms.

Penguin has for months been tracking e-book usage at libraries through pilot programs around the country. The effect of library downloads on commercial revenues has been acceptable and the publisher was comfortable with making new releases available, the director of online sales and marketing, Tim McCall, said Wednesday. That means libraries can provide e-editions of Hosseini's "And the Mountains Echoed" starting with its official date of publication, May 21.

"We feel that we're ready to take the next step and offer what consumers and libraries have been asking for," said McCall, who added that Penguin was not raising the price charged to libraries for e-books.

Like HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group and other publishers, Penguin is still not offering unlimited access to e-books. Libraries are allowed to lend out one e-edition at a time, for a duration determined by the library. Because e-books don't wear out, libraries can purchase them for one year, then must pay again to continue making them available.

Italy's highest criminal court ordered a new trial for Knox and former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito on Tuesday, overturning their acquittals in the gruesome slaying of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher.

Spokesman David Ford says an ABC News Primetime Special scheduled to air April 30 is moving forward as planned. It will be the first in-depth interview Knox has given since returning to Seattle.

Knox also has a memoir, "Waiting to Be Heard," due out on the same day as her television interview. Based on pre-orders, the book's ranking on Amazon.com moved from just above 2,400 Tuesday morning to 470 Tuesday afternoon.

HarperCollins spokeswoman Tina Andreadis says the book plans have not changed.

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Review: Strout's new novel a Maine family saga

By Kendal Weaver, Associated Press

"The Burgess Boys" (Random House), by Elizabeth Strout

Jim and Bob Burgess, the brothers who are the title characters of Elizabeth Strout's new novel, "The Burgess Boys," grew up fatherless in a small Maine town after an accident in the family car when they were young.

They were smart, though, and became lawyers in New York City. Now Jim, at 55, is a high-powered corporate attorney who once gained national media attention. Bob, at 51, is a legal aid lawyer with a more modest sense of himself. As the novel unfolds, they are drawn back to their hometown, revisiting old scars while struggling with a new shock to the family psyche.

This is Strout's first book since her 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Olive Kitteridge," and her extraordinary narrative gifts are evident again.

"Olive Kitteridge" is built on the scaffolding of separate short stories that, to lesser or greater degrees, involve the title character, a teacher in a coastal Maine town. "The Burgess Boys" follows a more traditional, more sweeping novelistic track, with the marital discord and conflicted feelings of the Burgess brothers set around their attempts to help a young nephew avoid jail.

Like Olive, who can be stern and not necessarily likable, the Burgess brothers are not depicted in a wholly agreeable light but become unforgettably alive to the reader. They have their foibles from the start: Bob, who is divorced and a bit sloppy, drinks and worries too much; Jim, married to a discontented heiress, is self-absorbed and belittles Bob, whom he calls "slob-dog."

Their sister, Bob's twin Susan, also divorced, lives in a cold, quiet house in Maine with her friendless teenage son, Zach -- the nephew who lands in serious legal trouble, even facing a possible hate crime charge, after throwing a frozen pig's head into the mosque of Somali immigrants.

The cultural chasm between white Maine locals and dark-skinned Muslims, along with efforts by both sides to bridge the distance, is a developing element throughout the book. But the distance between Bob and Jim -- painfully wide at times, lovingly close as well and turning on "a terrible secret" from childhood -- gives the novel a level of intrigue and human depth with lasting impact.

Strout's writing style is all her own, at times almost effortlessly fluid, with superbly rendered dialogue, sudden and unexpected bolts of humor and, just as a scene seems to be low-key, carried away by startling riffs of gripping emotion.

Many sections open with descriptions of sunlight or the deepening darkness of nightfall, as if to set the scene with a prose painting of the surroundings. These invariably are keen, lovely lines, such as this one describing the bustling Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn where Jim and Bob settled: "The autumn clouds, magnificent in their variegated darkness, were being spread apart by the wind, and great streaks of sunshine splashed down on the buildings on Seventh Avenue."

It's not clear why the narrator is a woman from the Burgess hometown in Maine, the fictional Shirley Falls, who was younger than the brothers but heard gossip about the childhood accident that killed their father. When she decides to write their story, even her mother voices doubt: "You don't know them," she said. "Nobody ever knows anyone."

Maybe so. But Strout knows and vividly evokes the territory of Maine and New York City, her characters, their inner lives and fears and -- beyond the saga of a family in crisis -- the healing power of mercy.

The bitter feelings that divided the nation during the Vietnam buildup and the Iraq invasion have become fading memories. But far fewer Americans still recall the even more passionate debate over our stance toward Nazi Germany during the first two years of World War II.

That tumultuous time between the invasion of Poland and the attack on Pearl Harbor gave rise to a conflict at home that pitted isolationists against interventionists. Larger-than-life figures, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to aviator Charles Lindbergh, were leading players in that ferocious battle in which the stakes couldn't have been higher.

In "Those Angry Days," journalist-turned-historian Lynne Olson captures that period in a fast-moving, highly readable narrative punctuated by high drama. It's an ideal complement to her previous books about Britain's Tory rebels who brought Winston Churchill to power and Americans who assisted England while it stood alone against a triumphant Germany.

The question of whether to intervene on Britain's behalf, and even to amend neutrality laws by shipping vitally needed supplies to the beleaguered nation, was one that divided families and friends.

Olson presents as a prime example the poignant story of celebrated author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who was caught between her husband's leadership of the campaign to keep America out of the war and the efforts of her mother and sister on behalf of intervention.

Roosevelt, according to the author, was overly cautious and hesitant, preferring to follow public opinion rather than lead it. "He was intimidated by congressional isolationists, whose strength he tended to exaggerate, and was loath to challenge them," Olson writes.

Pioneering a tactic that would be used by subsequent presidents, Roosevelt sought to discredit his opponents by questioning their patriotism and went on to enlist the FBI to wiretap their phones and seek derogatory information that could be used against them.

One figure who stands tall is Republican Wendell Willkie, whose break with his party's isolationism strengthened his bid for president. The author conveys the excitement of the 1940 convention that chose Willkie as the unlikely GOP nominee and the campaign that ended with FDR's election to an unprecedented third term.

The book is filled with profiles of fascinating figures on both sides of the debate: syndicated newspaper columnist Dorothy Thompson, a leading voice for intervention; Burton Wheeler, a progressive Democrat who broke with Roosevelt over the war and led the isolationist cause in the Senate; and British ambassador Lord Lothian, who promoted support for his country and helped get the president to devise the Lend-Lease program that kept Britain afloat.

Arrayed against the interventionists were many high-ranking military officers and the America First movement, whose anti-Semitic strains came to the surface in a Lindbergh speech that left him discredited among many Americans who once glorified him.

The fight over intervention mobilized the public to take part in the debate and, in the end, helped to educate Americans about the need to prepare for entry into the war. "It was a robust, if tumultuous, example of democracy in action," Olson writes.

"Those Angry Days" is popular history at its most riveting, detailing what the author rightfully characterizes as "a brutal, no-holds-barred battle for the soul of the nation." It is sure to captivate readers seeking a deeper understanding of how public opinion gradually shifted as America moved from bystander to combatant in the war to preserve democracy.

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